A longtime friend issued the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to Leah Ann Young, who then challenged her students at the College of Nursing and Allied Health at Northwestern State University of Louisiana.

She put the call out Wednesday on Moodle, a learning platform used for classes, asking students to bring a bucket, a towel and a donation, if they wished. She supplied 50 10-pound bags of ice.

“I told them we were going to do the Ice Bucket Challenge as a way to create the beginning of a fun semester,” said Young, a fourth level ASN coordinator and nurse practitioner.

Young estimates about 100 nursing students gathered on the school’s campus Thursday afternoon and had buckets of ice dumpedon their heads. They were soaked by 3 p.m. and also had added dollar bills — in ones, fives and 10s — to a tall, gray bucket Young had with her. She said they raised $500 with donations still being offered around 5 p.m.

“One of the things I think is incredible about this bandwagon is that they’ve started something that is different than anything else and they’ve used social media to set the rules,” Young said. “It’s increased awareness for a disease that is tragic, and so it’s brought it to the forefront.”

The challenge was a morale boaster for the first week of school, which started Monday, she said. Now, they’re in turn challenging Bossier Parish Community College nursing students.

“BPCC is a new nursing program, and we want to support them because we’ve been here 65 years now so we welcome them to the discipline of nursing education,” she said. “There’s plenty to go around. We all want to produce the same product which is a great nurse.”

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